Somewhere in the past 2 years I had developed a fantasy. It was a story in my being that I had to play out, I had a compulsion to complete. It was as though I were there.
Losing Otto has made every story of children's deaths real. And one that kept playing in my head was one from the Holocaust. I had heard a story sometime in my life of soldiers taking babies from mother's arms and throwing them off bridges.
This story is too hard for me to process, that instant of life changing to death, without need, with such shock.
So, in my story,
I am in line, on a bridge, being taken to a camp among my family and people from my town, my baby in my arms. A soldier takes my baby, we are over a river, the bridge 30 feet or so above the water, and it's cold, it's fall. It's twilight.
He throws my baby over the railing and without a hesitation I rush over the rail too. Into the cold cold water. The baby's blanket is white, so I can see it even in the last light of day, 10 feet below the surface. I grab him. Bullets come into the water, but they don't find us. I swim out towards the edge of the river, and there are trees there, making dark, making shade. We are hidden.
We move a little farther down, into the trees, into the woods, in the water. The soldiers give up, they move on, I hear people crying.
We get out of the water, very cold. I hold him close to get any heat I have.
A little ways into the woods there is a small cabin.
And in the end, I am by the fire, holding my baby, warming.
I don't know if he survives the cold from the icy water. Sometimes he does and sometimes not. But I get those few days with him, at least, I saved him, I saved us.
In this version today, we get warm, we get food, we get hidden, we get well, we survive.
Because: Miracles Happen
And a 4 month old baby survived the flood of the tsunami after being washed out of her parents arms. Rescue workers found her in rubble, 3 days later, and returned her to her parents.
I don't know why this story played in my head, why I needed to construct it, why I had to save Otto in this way. But it gave my heart some kind of strength. And I'm so happy to hear of THIS true story. Among all of the untold ones about the children who are gone from their parents arms forever.
I cry for them too.
